New AAA survey reveals half of drivers admit to being ‘intexticated’ when in car alone
As traffic begins to pick up across the country with increased vaccinations and decreased pandemic restrictions, AAA Texas reminds drivers about the importance of focusing on the road ahead and not on their smartphones. April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and AAA has just released the results of a survey to assess driver attitudes and behaviors toward distracted driving. The online AAA survey revealed the following: More than half of drivers (51 percent) admitted they text and/or email while alone in the vehicle Those in the age range of 25 to 34 are even more likely (59 percent) to text and/or email while driving alone A quarter (26 percent) of drivers say it’s OK to use a cell phone if they are alone and at a complete stop with no other passengers in the vehicle
American Airlines to use nonunion pilots for some test flights, drawing criticism
But the Allied Pilots Association, which represents American’s roughly 15,000 pilots, opposes the measure.
“The foundation of AA’s strong safety culture has been a commitment to ensuring that independent, protected, and unintimidated pilots are conducting these critical safety check flights versus management pilots who may have a conflict of interest,” Eric Ferguson, an American Airlines captain and APA’s president, said in a Feb. 19 message to members. “Any move to crack that foundation will be met with the strongest opposition by APA.”
The union did not say that there were any imminent or specific safety risks or that procedures were out of line with federal standards.
American said that its company pilots were already performing most of these flights and that they received the same specialized training as union test pilots.
U.S. House panel probes SpaceX launch activities
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said on Monday it is investigating a SpaceX commercial space launch that regulators determined violated U.S. safety requirements and its test license.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in February that SpaceX’s December launch of Starship SN8 proceeded without the company demonstrating that the public risk from “far field blast overpressure” was within regulatory criteria.
The FAA says far field blast overpressure may be a hazard to the public if the launch vehicle explodes on impact, potentially creating a shock wave that damages windows in areas relatively far from the impact site.
House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio and Representative Rick Larsen, who oversees the aviation subcommittee, said in a letter last Thursday to the FAA that “given the high-risk nature of the industry, we are disappointed that the FAA declined to conduct an independent review of the event and, to the best of our knowledge, has not pursued any form of enforcement action.”
In February, the FAA said it had required SpaceX to investigate the incident, including a comprehensive review of its safety culture, “operational decision-making and process discipline.”
The FAA ordered some testing suspended at the Texas launch site until the investigation was completed and it approved the company’s corrective actions.
The FAA said SpaceX’s corrective actions were incorporated into a February launch and that it anticipated “taking no further enforcement action on SN8 matter.”
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. The letter was reported earlier by Politico.
The FAA declined to comment on the letter.
Committee staff have been examining for two months “SpaceX launch activities that, taken together, raise serious questions,” the lawmakers’ letter said, urging the FAA to “resist any potential undue influence on launch safety decision-making.”
The Maritime Union is calling for Ports of Auckland chief executive Tony Gibson to go following a damning report which found systemic problems with health and safety under his watch.
In a three-year period, two port workers lost their lives due to accidents on the wharves and a speeding pilot boat accidentally struck and killed an ocean swimmer.
Gibson and port chairman Bill Osborne today accepted the findings of the report and accepted they had not being doing enough to keep staff safe.
“I now expect Ports of Auckland to implement these recommendations without delay and more importantly to hold management to account on monitoring and compliance,” Osborne said.
Maritime Union national secretary Craig Harrison said the independent report by Construction Health and Safety New Zealand (CHASNZ) confirmed everything the union has said about the failure of port management to keep staff safe over several years.
“There is no confidence in the chief executive and the board has not done its job,” said Harrison, who said the first step should be to replace Gibson.
Speaking at a press conference today, Gibson said he has no plans to resign, saying his focus is making sure the wrongs that have been done are put right.
Gibson said he will stay in the job as long as the board has faith in him.
Osborne said the board has confidence in Gibson and senior management’s commitment to drive forward on every recommendation in the report.
He said there are two broad themes that stand out in the report that need addressing - making improvements to safety management systems to ensure work is always carried out safely, and transforming company culture to create a strong safety culture.
At an earlier press conference, Mayor Phil Goff said the question of confidence in Gibson is a matter for the board.
Analysis of Safety Culture and Biorisks for Nurses during the Covid-19 Pandemic
This research project aims to depict the culture of safety and the biological risks faced by nurses in times of pandemic. The research team will propose recommendations to be implemented in real time to ensure the optimal safety and health of these workers during and after the pandemic.
In this context, it is essential to document the multiple realities and their effects on the health and safety of these workers. Nurses must deal with many challenges, including fears of shortages of protective material and distress about the risk of contaminating their loved ones when they return home after work.
Are You Worried About Freight Rail Safety? You Probably Should Be.
In July 2013, a freight train carrying crude oil ran off the tracks in the small town of Lac-Megantic in eastern Quebec. As a result, it exploded, killing 47 people. The explosion also led to the destruction of 40 buildings and caused an abundance of oil to pollute the local environment. Among the causes, according to a 2018 BBC report, was “a lax safety culture at train company MMA.” That’s the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway — which was purchased by a holding company a year after the tragedy.
A new article by Vice transportation reporter Aaron Gordon suggests that this accident wasn’t an isolated incident so much as it is a warning of what’s to come. Rail freight is seen by many as a valid alternative to transporting goods by trucks, especially in urban areas. But what happens when an industry has insufficient oversight regarding safety measures? That can lead to literal accidents waiting to happen.
Gordon’s article cites a 2017 derailing in Hyndman, Pennsylvania. No one was killed, but over a dozen of the cars that detailed contained hazardous materials; had things gone slightly differently, Hyndman might have been a tragedy on the same level as Lac-Megantic.
Ep.69 Do safety in design processes change the design?
Topics:
Is safety and design effective? Risk shuffling. Russell’s key findings. The hierarchy of controls. The proper use of safety and design. Evaluating design to minimize risk. Practical advice from Russell.
Quotes:
“We don’t always have opportunities in safety science to get some objective artifacts…”
“I’ve never heard of a designer saying they’ve got plenty of time and a ton of budget, so let’s, you know, get down and optimize for safety.”
“And if we start by listing the operations before we list the hazards or risks, then we’re going to be in a much better place.”
Isle of Wight Ambulance Service staff among the happiest in country
THE latest NHS staff survey results show that people working at Isle of Wight NHS Trust are seeing improvements to their work life.
Among the positives were the quality of care, safety culture and the health and wellbeing support on offer to staff, plus improvements to morale and staff engagement.
More people are recommending the trust as a place to work and there was an increase in the number of staff happy with the standard of care provided.
The Ambulance Service recorded some of the best results in the country, scoring highest in its category for eight out of ten key themes.
Overall, the trust has seen improvements across its workforce in six key areas — quality of care, safety culture, safe environment - bullying and harassment, health and wellbeing, staff engagement and morale.
However, the survey highlighted several areas for improvement, including how the trust involves staff in decision-making, how teams discuss their effectiveness and people’s experience of violence in the workplace.
New EU regulation defines “Food Safety Culture”
The European Union (EU) recently adopted a regulation requiring food business operators to establish and provide evidence of an appropriate food safety culture and detailing the steps they must take to satisfy this obligation. Food safety culture also is a priority area within the United States, and it is one of the four pillars of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) New Era of Smarter Food Safety. However, there are no FDA regulations or guidance documents defining food safety culture. Although the EU regulation is not enforceable for food sold in the United States, the regulation may be of interest to U.S. food companies because it helps identify what it means to regulators for a food company to have a strong food safety culture and the types of activities that potentially can demonstrate that a company is fostering a strong food safety culture within its business.
On 3 March 2021, the European Commission adopted Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/382, which amends an existing food safety regulation ((EC) No 852/2004). EU 2021/282 adds the following new chapter to EC No 852/2004:
Nearly half of hospital staff unwell through stress in 2020
David Wilkinson, director of people and organisational development at the trust, said: “The NHS has never before experienced a year like this one and the 2020 staff survey gives us an opportunity to understand our colleagues’ experiences.
“Both in Morecambe Bay and across the NHS, the pandemic has, of course, affected colleague experience. For example, at UHMBT and nationally, perceptions about immediate managers, team working and work-related stress have all worsened in 2020 as the need for fast decisions, deployment to different departments or roles and new practices took hold.
“Significantly more colleagues gave positive answers to questions relating to safety culture which had deteriorated in 2019, but there is still work to do to return to the higher scores of 2018.
Ben Maden, the chair of union staff side for UHMBT, said: “After one of the most intense years the NHS has ever faced, now is the time for coming together, learning and making many more positive changes for the benefit of all staff at UHMBT. While it is easy to dwell on the low points, we must not forget all of the positive progress we’ve made.”
Ep. 68 Are safety cases an impending crisis?
EPISODE SUMMARY
Safety cases have been around since the inception of nuclear power. Now, safety cases have spread all the way to amusement parks. They are always linked to major accidents.
EPISODE NOTES
Today, we plan to discuss whether safety cases are headed towards an impending crisis.
Join us as we figure out if the work safety community is headed for disaster.
Topics:
Shifting the burden of proof. The notion of “anti-safety”. Making the implicit, explicit. Trends of the past. Impediments to research. Variant and process theories. Disrupting beliefs and ideas to create a more favorable outcome. Why collaboration matters.
Quotes:
“…It’s a little bit paradoxical: Because why do we try to identify hazards, if not making the implicit claim that by trying to identify hazards and control them, we are making our system safer?”
“People don’t share their safety case data with anyone they don’t have to share it with.”
“And if we can turn the reasons why people do things into theories, and then test those theories, then we’ve got good potential for changing how people do things…”
10 years after Fukushima, safety is still nuclear power’s greatest challenge
Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, the biggest recorded earthquake in Japanese history hit the country’s northeast coast. It was followed by a tsunami that traveled up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) inland, reaching heights of over 140 feet (43.3 meters) in some areas and sweeping entire towns away in seconds. This disaster left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. It also destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and released radioactive materials over a large area. The accident triggered widespread evacuations, large economic losses and the eventual shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan. A decade later, the nuclear industry has yet to fully to address safety concerns that Fukushima exposed. We are scholars specializing in engineering and medicine and public policy, and have advised our respective governments on nuclear power safety. Kiyoshi Kurokawa chaired an independent national commission, known as the NAIIC, created by the Diet of Japan to investigate the root causes of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Najmedin Meshkati served as a member and technical adviser to a committee appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to identify lessons from this event for making U.S. nuclear plants safer and more secure. Those reviews and manyothers concluded that Fukushima was a man-made accident, triggered by natural hazards, that could and should have been avoided. Experts widely agreed that the root causes were lax regulatory oversight in Japan and an ineffective safety culture at the utility that operated the plant.
H2O Innovation Strengthens its Health & Safety Program and Earns ISO Certifications for Genesys
QUEBEC CITY, March 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – (TSXV: HEO) – H2O Innovation Inc. (“H2O Innovation” or the “Corporation”) is pleased to announce that one of its specialty chemicals business lines, Genesys, has obtained two new ISO certifications, demonstrating its continued commitment to respecting and promoting health and safety at work.
As part of the Corporation’s 3-Year Strategic Plan announced a few months ago, one of the main objectives was to create a safer working environment with top tier health, safety and environmental (“HSE”) practices. The well-being of the Corporation’s employees and the protection of the environment are priorities for H2O Innovation and essential to its strong culture. “Some high-profile industrial clients even require suppliers to adopt best practices with regards to environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) factors and HSE. Focusing on continuous improvement in these areas should enable us to raise our profile as a supplier and differentiate ourselves from the competition,” stated Frédéric Dugré, President and CEO of H2O Innovation.
Your Role in Improving EMS Flight Safety
You’re on the scene of a terrible car crash and decide to request a helicopter air ambulance to transport a patient. In the moment, you’re probably not thinking about all the things that occur behind the scenes after you make that request, but helicopter operators are making a lot of important decisions, some of which you—the emergency responder—can influence.
After your call, the operator should assess the risks—such as weather, flight conditions, and which pilot is on duty—to determine if it’s safe to accept the flight. How—and if—those risks are assessed and mitigated can determine whether the medical flight transport leads to success or tragedy.
Let’s look at an accident involving a medical transport flight where the risks were successfully evaluated by two companies, but, unfortunately, not by another.
Lessons from Grenfell: Why aren’t we learning?
Gill Kernick is a Master Consultant at JMJ Associates who specialises in safety leadership and culture. As a former Grenfell resident, moving out three years before the tragedy in 2017, she has been a high-profile voice on the subject. In this episode, she chats to SHP Editor Ian Hart and IFSEC Global Editor James Moore about the pressing need to improve building safety culture and prevent low probability, high consequence events – such as Grenfell – from happening again.
Gill now lives close to Grenfell and can see the tower from her new home. She said: “Having watched the fire, I became committed to applying the learnings of major accident prevention to Grenfell and the wider housing sector. I had assumed, falsely, that Grenfell would be a catalyst for change. Over time, I’ve sadly realised this hasn’t happened hence the need for so many of us to campaign.”
“It was predictable, absolutely preventable, and we’re not learning the lessons. We’re not changing how we think about our relationship to risk in the case of buildings.”
Task force says Michigan’s dams face “grave situation” without significant investment …. Outreach and Awareness: Schedule safety awareness seminars for internal and external stakeholders to develop a dam safety culture in Michigan. Target audiences would be state agency personnel, county officials, dam owners, floodplain managers and residents, legislators, consulting firms and tribal leaders. “Aging dams, just like all infrastructure throughout Michigan, suffer from a lack of consistent investment, which must be addressed if we want to avoid future tragedies,” says Liesl Clark, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and a task force member.
Key lesson for California utilities from Texas: Be proactive www.kcrw.com/news/show…
… Meshkati says California utilities must be proactive when thinking about developing a robust energy plan. “The business as usual [approach] is over. Climate change is here, it’s not a hoax, it’s not fake news. And we see the effect of that. The utilities need to look at the grid, they really need to take care of their maintenance of their grid, and they need to be proactive and improve their safety culture.”
…
U.S. audit report cites ‘weaknesses’ in FAA certification of Boeing 737 MAX … In December, Congress passed legislation reforming how the FAA certifies airplanes, especially the long-standing practice of delegating some certification tasks to manufacturers.
The report urges FAA to “incorporate lessons” from the accidents into “implementing a risk-based approach” in delegating oversight and said reforms “will be vital to restore confidence in FAA’s certification process and ensure the highest level of safety in future certification efforts.”
The new law boosts FAA oversight of aircraft manufacturers, requires disclosure of critical safety information and new whistleblower protections.
The legislation requires an independent review of Boeing’s safety culture. Boeing agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in January into the MAX as part of a deferred prosecution agreement, a form of corporate plea bargain
FAA said it encouraging manufacturers to engage earlier in “their development process to provide the agency a better understanding of novel features.” It is also working with other civil aviation authorities “to evaluate certification requirements for derivative aircraft, thus ensuring a consistent worldwide approach to safety and the similar evaluation and treatment of design changes.”
AI cars are more vulnerable to hacker attack
A new report released by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) stated that autonomous vehicles – based on Artificial Intelligence to guide the car without needing a driver – are “highly vulnerable to a wide range of attacks” that can be dangerous for passengers, pedestrians and people in other vehicles. The report focuses on undetectable cyber security intrusions for humans, including possible sensor attacks with light beams, oppressive object detection systems and malicious back-end activity.
The scenarios presented in the report include the possibility of attacks on decision-making and spoofing algorithms, which can trick the autonomous vehicle when it comes to “recognizing” cars, people or obstacles that do not exist. “The attack can be used to make AI ‘blind’ to pedestrians. This can cause confusion on the streets, as autonomous cars can reach pedestrians on the streets or in pedestrian crossings, ”says the report.
The AI systems and sensors needed to make the vehicle run increase the area prone to a hacker attack. The authors of the research indicate that in order to resolve the vulnerabilities, it is necessary that companies, together with third-party suppliers, develop a safety culture throughout the production chain. In addition, cars will need a continuous review of systems to ensure that they have not been tampered with.
FAA denied SpaceX a safety waiver. Its Starship SN8 rocket launched anyway
On Dec. 9, 2020, SpaceX sent one of its Starship Mars rocket prototypes, dubbed SN8, on a high-altitude test flight for the first time. The successful launch and flight ended with a dramatic and explosive hard landing, which Elon Musk had warned ahead of time might be the outcome.
On Tuesday, we learned the whole scene came in defiance of the Federal Aviation Administration, the US regulatory agency that oversees much of commercial space activity and licenses SpaceX’s Starship prototypes to operate in American airspace.
“Prior to the Starship SN8 test launch in December 2020, SpaceX sought a waiver to exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations,” reads a statement from an FAA spokesperson. “After the FAA denied the request, SpaceX proceeded with the flight. As a result of this non-compliance, the FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation of the incident. All testing that could affect public safety at the Boca Chica, Texas, launch site was suspended until the investigation was completed and the FAA approved the company’s corrective actions to protect public safety.”
NTSB: Bryant’s Pilot Disregarded Training
Celebrity allure met aviation safety culture and the pilot threw his training out the window. So concluded the NTSB today in issuing its long-awaited probable cause finding in the January 26, 2020 crash of a Sikorsky S-76B that killed retired basketball legend Kobe Bryant and eight others near Calabasas, California.
The NTSB found that pilot Ara Zobayan conducted the flight significantly counter to his training likely in an effort to please his celebrity passenger and deliver him to his final destination, even as weather progressively deteriorated during the Part 135 VFR flight. Zobayan, an 8,500-hour IFR-rated pilot, had logged just 75 hours of instrument time and all but 68 hours of that was simulated, the NTSB found. And although the S-76 was equipped with an autopilot, Zobayan did not use it as he attempted to climb through a cloud layer as terrain and ceiling began to converge.
The NTSB concluded that “the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s decision to continue flight under visual flight rules into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), which resulted in the pilot’s spatial orientation and loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s likely self-induced pressure and the pilot’s plan continuation bias which adversely affected the pilot’s decision-making, and Island Express Helicopter Inc.’s inadequate review and oversight of the safety management processes.”
Another Harmony fatality, less than a week after company-wide safety day
Harmony said an employee was fatally injured on February 3 following a seismic event that triggered a fall of ground at its Target mine in the Free State province.
It’s Harmony’s third fatality within the first five weeks of this year, after nine fatalities were reported at its South Africa operations in 2020.
Relevant authorities were informed immediately and an investigation was underway, the company said.
CEO Peter Steenkamp reiterated Harmony’s goal was “zero harm” and said every effort was made to embed a proactive safety culture.
The company had declared a safety day after reporting its second death in 15 days in January, a winch-related fatality at its Phakisa mine which is also in Free State.
FAA Investigates Explosive Landing of SpaceX’s Mars Starship Prototype
Tuesday’s launch had actually been delayed by the FAA. SpaceX wanted to launch the SN9 (Serial Number 9) prototype on Jan. 28.
According to The Verge, SpaceX violated the terms of its FAA test license with the launch of the SN8 prototype on Dec. 11.
Reuters reported that SpaceX sought a waiver to exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations. The FAA denied the request, Reuters reported, but SpaceX proceeded with the test, which ended when the rocket exploded while trying to land.
After the SN9 launch was delayed, Musk tweeted, “Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”
In a statement Tuesday, an FAA spokesperson said, “The FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation of the incident, including a comprehensive review of the company’s safety culture, operational decision-making and process discipline. All testing that could affect public safety at the Boca Chica launch site was suspended until the investigation was completed and the FAA approved the company’s corrective actions.”
That cleared the way for Tuesday’s launch of the SN9 prototype.
Potholes a growing concern for drivers in the UK
Potholes are perceived by motorists to be a much more significant concern on the road than they were three years ago, overtaking texting and drink driving as a worsening problem according to the findings of a new report from the UK’s largest road safety charity.
PotholesIAM RoadSmart’s annual Safety Culture Report, which tracks drivers’ changing attitudes to key road safety issues over time, discovered that three in four motorists (75 per cent) now perceive potholes to be a bigger issue for road users than they were three years ago. This was followed by driver distraction (68 per cent) – such as texting or talking on a mobile phone – and traffic congestion (65 per cent).
Further findings from the report, now in its sixth year and which involves surveying more than 2,000 motorists, also discovered that around nine in ten (89 per cent) drivers have been affected by potholes over the last year.
NHS ‘Never Event’ Mistakes Are Not Yet Truly Preventable, According To Safety Watchdog
The independent Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) says labelling some mistakes as never events could fuel a blame culture in the health service.
The HSIB said that at least seven so-called NHS “never events” should be reclassified because the health service has failed to put in place effective measures to stop them from happening.
They added that NHS England should remove the never event incidents from the list of 15 it requires hospitals to report, due to the fact that they are not “wholly preventable” and the NHS has not properly recognised the systemic risks that mean they keep occurring.
Examples of the errors include a nine-year-old girl who was given a drug by injection that should have been given by mouth, and a 62-year-old man having the wrong hip replaced during surgery.
Other incidents included a 26-year-old man who had a feeding tube incorrectly inserted into his lung rather than his stomach and a woman who had a vaginal swab left inside her following the birth of her first child.
NHS England have stated that there are steps hospitals can take which mean the mistakes should never happen, but HSIB have said that many of the steps are administrative and do not completely take into account the nature of the errors, how they happen, or the environment staff are working in.